Fairmont Château Laurier — Ottawa's castle hotel haunted by its creator

The Fairmont Château Laurier in Ottawa, Ontario, is one of Canada's most iconic hotels, a grand limestone château sitting beside the Rideau Canal and the Parliament Buildings. The hotel's most famous ghost story involves its creator, Charles Melville Hays, the president of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, who oversaw the hotel's design and construction. Hays never saw his masterpiece completed — he died aboard the Titanic on April 15, 1912, just weeks before the Château Laurier's opening. His ghost is said to wander the hotel's corridors, particularly on the upper floors and in the ballroom, where he has been described as a distinguished man in Edwardian-era formal wear who seems to inspect the building with proprietary interest. Staff have described doors opening and closing, unexplained cold spots, and the sound of footsteps in empty hallways. The hotel's location in the heart of Canada's capital, overlooking Parliament Hill and the Ottawa River, gives it a unique significance — a building haunted by a man who died in the most famous maritime disaster in history, still watching over the hotel he created but never saw.